Blair asks EU to change or fail
BBC Online
The European Union faces a "crisis in political leadership" and must change to win back public support, Prime Minister Tony Blair has told Euro MPs. Blair, outlining plans for the UK's six-month EU presidency, argued the EU would fail "on a grand scale" if did not face up to globalisation. "Only by change will Europe recover its strength, its relevance, its idealism" and therefore public support, he said. EC president Jose Manuel Barroso said consensus was vital to avoid paralysis. Pointing to last week's turbulent talks over the EU budget, Barroso said the union faced a "decisive moment". The EU presidency would be a test of the UK's historic pragmatism during its presidency, he added. Last week's summit saw clashes over the UK refusal to give up its £3bn annual refund from the EU budget unless there were reforms to farm subsidies. Blair said he did not think Europe quite realised the competitive challenged it faced from countries like China and India. He was met with both heckles and applause when he said he had always been a "passionate pro-European". He insisted he wanted to reinvigorate the EU, not wreck it. He argued the French and Dutch voters' rejection of the draft European constitution reflected a wide discontent with the EU. "This is not a time to accuse those who want Europe to change of betraying Europe," he argued. "Ideals survive through change, they die through inertia in the face of challenge." Blair denied he had been unwilling to discuss the UK rebate or that he had demanded the Common Agricultural Policy be renegotiated overnight. But it would be too late to wait until 2014 to begin to change the fact that 40 percent of the EU budget was currently spent on agriculture, for example, he said. Blair claimed the debate on the EU's future was being misrepresented as a battle between a free market Europe and a social Europe, nor was it about "trading insults". He hit out at the caricature of an "Anglo-Saxon market philosophy that tramples on the poor and disadvantaged". A "social Europe" was needed but it must be one which worked and focused on skills, not regulation which might save some jobs for a time at the expense of many future jobs.
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